Crowborough Circular

Crowborough 10 mile circular

We spotted this walk and decided to give it a go on a nice bright winters day. We had walked sections of it on other occasions and one of the attractions was that it took us to Withyham and "The Dorset Arms" where on a previous outing we had engaged a decent lunch and pint.

Being a circular walk  we could have started anywhere but the suggested start on the edge of the Ashdown Forest suited us just fine because it meant the lunch stop was about three-quarters the way round which would suit us just fine as a raging thirst would have been worked up by then.

As always with Crowborough based walks there was no shortage of hills and good long pulls to get the heart pumping.

One of the looming hills as we left the car park and headed for Crowborough.

Deep in the valley of the photo above there are the remains of what must have been a substantial water wheel. The pictures below show the sluice overflow and the water height built up behind the dam (now missing) produced a decent head of water for driving the wheel, the foundations of which can still be seen. However, we have no idea what the wheel was driving - some accounts say it was corn grinding and others an iron works.

 

 

The path took us around the edge of Crowborough town and through some very nice Wealdway countryside. In places it was muddy under foot but generally the path was well defined and reasonably dry.

 

We passed this original Oast house which was pretty much unchanged from its working days. Its unusual to see them in this original state now as many are turned into homes.

After 8 miles of hard walking the Dorset Arms came into view and as it was now well past opening time we scurried up to the door.

C A L A M I T Y

The Pub was closed! Hell .....

No other watering hole close by so we sat outside the Pub and ate our emergency rations - 2 x chocolate Penguin bars and a Cereal bar!

The long pull up the last 2 miles to the car was very dismal indeed. But the bottle of "Doombar" in the fridge went down a treat!

Stats for the day were...

Date	Steps	Distance (mi)	Time (min)	Calories	Average speed (mph)	Elevation gain (feet)	Elevation lost (feet)	Max speed (mph)
04/02/2013	19,750	10.4	248	1,244	2.5	1783	1758	5.3